Thursday, August 28, 2008

I'm going to summarize the changes to the annotations I made last week here, so that they're easier to find. Then I'll fold them back into the original annotations page. This are a combination of stuff from my comments page, the Annotations of Douglas Wolk and Tim Callahan, and from the Geoff Johns interview at Newsarama.

Stuff from Doug's annotations that I didn't have:

I don't know how I missed that "Legion of Three Worlds" is a riff on "Flash of Two Worlds".

Page 8: "Tornado Jimmy" is actually Jimmy the Genie from SPJO 42. Now all we need is bird-foot Jimmy.

Page 11, panel 2: the guard's name is "Gaston Dominguez", a shout-out to Gaston Dominguez-Letelier, co-ower of Meltdown Comics in Hollywood, CA.

Page 15: How does Comet fit in to Post-Crisis Pre-Crisis continuity without Supergirl?

Page 26: it's revealed that Superboy-Prime inspired the Legion of Super-Villains, just like Superboy/Superman inspired the Legion of Super-Heroes. Jimmy Olsen says that Cosmic King "followed an ancient code of sadism and murder inspired by a dark being whose name was never spoken", who had been speculated to be Darkseid or some connection with the Crime Bible. However, Geoff Johns said later that the "dark being" is just Superboy Prime.

Page 33: the "ripcord ring" is from "Action Comics" #864.

Stuff from Tim's annotations that I didn't have:

Page 6-7: there are pictures of Superman 1,000,000 (why a future version?) and Tangent (Earth-9) Superman. The "S" symbols in the center are from when Superman had split into electric blue and electric red.

Page 13: the Teen Titans statues represent the team when Geoff Johns was writing them a few years ago.

Page 20: "When Brainiac 5 says that he "alone" created the anti-lead serum, he's paraphrasing Dr. Frankenstein from the 1931 James Whale classic film. Goes along with his mad scientist haircut and everything."

Page 28: I should have mentioned that not only was Leland McCauley Brande's rival Pre-Crisis, but in the Post-ZH reboot he was murdered by and then impersonated by Ra's al Ghul.

Page 31: "My guess is that Chameleon Boy, Dream Girl, and Element Lad are up to something. Probably something involving the Legion Espionage Squad. Because Johns is definitely not going to leave the Espionage Squad out of the action. Look for them to pop up with some vital information/secret weapon/awesomeness around issue #4."

From my commenters:

"did anyone else notice that all of a sudden this legion is using threeboot legion's logo?"

Page 6: To the left and right of Luthor that looks like the Unknown Superman from All-Star Superman, and to the right Cyborg Superman or a damaged Superman robot and the bottle-city of Kandor. Also, if you look closely, you can see a picture of Superman and two boys (Kal-El II and Jor-El II, from "Superman" #166).

Page 9, panel 1: "It looks like the armor that Superman used in Krisis of the Krimson Kriptonite in Action Comics #659"

Page 14: The name "Science Police" was first used in Adventure #303

Page 16, panel 3: Last time we saw the women from Taltar, they were caucasian, now they're green-skinned.

Page 20 panel 8: "I alone." Brainy is fond of this verbal construction - see Adventure #344 and episode 1.09 of the cartoon.

Page 18-19: This is the same Mon-El from "Action Comics" Annual, along with Ursa and Zod from the recent "Last Son" arc. "There's a touch of gray in Zod's hair, if you look close. I guess he's gotten out a few times and screwed around."

Page 26: Superboy Prime is "an ancient evil whose name has never been said. They don't talk about it a lot. It's the secret Legion of Super-Villains code. "

Page 28: "Brande's death is an interesting parallel to the Legion's origin story. They could save his life the first time, and that's what inspired the beginning of the Legion. But they couldn't save his life here, and it's a turning point just like before. "

Page 35-36: "These are representative of the members. They're not all the members who are coming through, because some of them are dead and some of them have changed. Like in the Zero Hour Legion, Monstress died awhile ago, Thunder returned to her own time – so there will be characters that don't appear in this story because their characters don't currently exist. We pick up the Zero Hour Legion right where we left them off. And in the three-boot Legion, Dream Girl died and Cosmic Boy's missing, and their Mon-El is back in the Phantom Zone, so we'll be up-to-date with everything as it is right now. Like in the Zero Hour Legion, Lightning Lad actually has the body of Element Lad."

I'm really confused about Lar Gand's history across the multiverse now. My first thought was that the traditional Earth-1 Mon-El (from "Superboy" #89) was the Mon-El from the "Lightning Saga" story, the Lar Gand from the 1990s "Superboy" series became the post-Zero Hour reboot's M'Onel/Valor, and the Lar Gand from the "Action Comics" annual was the post-Infinite Crisis Mon-El. But Geoff Johns said no, that the Action Annual version is the one who's in the Lightning Saga Legion. So then who is the one appearing in the regular Legion series, recently brought out of the Phantom Zone by Supergirl?

6 comments:

Dave P.
said...

"Page 20 panel 8: "I alone." Brainy is fond of this verbal construction - see Adventure #344 and episode 1.09 of the cartoon.

If I remember correctly (and I may not it's been a few years), in the Omega story around Superboy/LSH # 250, when Brainy went mad, he uttered a phrase that began something like "I and only I" just before he collapsed. I think it was in issue 251 or 252. I don't have those issues handy now, but I remember his contortions as he collapsed. Can someone check this out? This could be a reference to that time too.

I don't think that the Action Comics annual was meant to replace or reboot Superboy V1 #89. Rather, I think Geoff Johns merely wanted to retell the tale so readers who weren't familiar with Mon-El would understand who he was when he appeared in Last Son. They've made it clear on more than one occasion that the "Lighting Saga" Legion is New Earth/Earth 0's Legion (in other words, the Legion of the DCU's MAIN Earth). The threeboot Legion is from another Earth in the multiverse -- Supergirl got thrown there when she was fighting at the center of the universe during Infinite Crisis. I heard somewhere that the Phantom Zone exists outside the borders of the multiverse, and that's an interesting theory, but I don't know of any evidence to back it up -- I think the threeboot Mon-El is from that universe, not New Earth's.

In one panel (forget which page) you can see Steel's hammer, in the same pannel what appears to be models of various coloured kryptionite. (They are not the real thing because in the previous Legion story the Legion had gone to Batman's old bat cave to deserpately find some, plus glass won't hold the radition back so Prime would have been effected).